Within American society, mental disorder is commonly understood as an attribute of the individual. This intuitive understanding reflects the experiential reality that it is individuals who are beset by feelings of fear and despair, confused by intrusive or jumbled thoughts, addicted to drugs, and so forth. In this regard, everyday thinking is consistent with contem porary psychiatry, which also individualizes pathology, increasingly in biological terms. The contributors to this handbook collectively articulate an alternative vision, one in which the individual experience of psychopathology is inextricably embedded within its social context. This theme—the interface between society and the inward experience of its constituents—is developed here in a more encompassing manner than has been previously undertaken. Although this perspective may seem self-evident, especially in a handbook on the sociology of mental health, the widespread adoption of a medical model of aberrant states, especially by sociologists, has, we submit, obscured the relevance of social organi zation and processes.
